HISTORY POPULARISED AND TWEETED: EMOTIONS AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS AROUND THE CONQUEST OF NAVARRE IN 1512 ÍÑIGO MUGUETA UNIVERSIDAD PÚBLICA DE NAVARRA SPAIN Date of receipt: 12th of January, 2018 Final date of acceptance: 28th of June, 2018 ABSTRACT This study analyses the social representations and uses of the Conquest of Navarre in 1512 by the troops of Castile. Starting from an analysis of the feelings that David Lowenthal thinks history arouses, the interpretations of it by non-university authors linked to the Basque nationalist groups, Nabarralde and Nafarroa Bizirik will be analysed. The repercussions of these interpretations in the society of Navarre will also be evaluated through a series of cultural manifestations. Some of the most important are those on social networks such as Twitter, where the theories of some of these authors have achieved a large following.1 KEYWORDS Social Representacions, Conquest of Navarre, Kingdom of Navarre, Social Networks, Historiography. CAPITALIA VERBA Representationes Societatis, Occupatio Navarrae, Regnum Navarrae, Nexus Societatis, Historiographicalis Productio. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XII (2018): 57-90 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2018.12.02 57 58 ÍÑIGO MUGUETA 1. Introduction1 In this study we set out to analyse the different debates currently taking place about the conquest of Navarre. We will compare the historiographical controversy against the material generated around the event in different cultural areas: press, novels, essays and internet, without excluding the ‘popular’ debates found in chats, forums or social networks such as Twitter or Facebook. Therefore, our primary sources come from historiographical controversy, but they are situated in the worlds of communication, popular belief and the academic sphere. Our analysis of these social representations of Navarre’s past have an almost psychological intention, as we will go into detail on the reasons that led different people to take one attitude or another towards certain historical events. We should clarify that, at present, the most productive and dynamic historicist movement —quantitatively speaking— is the one from the political sphere of Basque nationalism, which is why the most visible social representations we will study usually emerge from this political-social domain, although from time to time we will analyse other alternative or antagonistic formulations that nevertheless have less social impact. 2. The state of the question: between historical memory and social representations The study of the social representations of history constitutes one of the most fruitful lines of work at present, because focusing the analysis on the present allows us to understand the ever-greater distance between academic history and popular history.2 Recently, the social networks and the so-called ‘transmedia universe’ (cinema, television, comics, novels…) have been conceived as new genres for history3 and historians are increasingly studying them. In these new spheres or 1. This study has been carried out within the framework of a History and Videogames project (II): knowledge, learning and projection of the past in the digital society (HAR2016-78147-P). An initial vision of the project was presented in the Lacarra Seminar at the Universidad de Zaragoza, on the initiative of professors Mario Lafuente, Conception Villanueva and Carlos Laliena, whom I would like to thank for the invitation. This study is the direct result of that presentation. The same day as the conference, my dear mediaevalist colleague and friend Pascual Tamburri died suddenly; just a few days earlier he expressed his interest about my involvement to me. I hope the lines below serve as a modest tribute to him. 2. Mugueta, Íñigo. “Las representaciones sociales de la Historia al servicio de la didáctica en Educación Superior”, Contextos Educativos, 1 (2016): 9-30; Mugueta, Íñigo; Tobalina, Eva. “Medievo digital o medievo popular: representaciones sociales of the Edad Media en las comunidades de gamers on-line”, Miscelánea Medieval Murciana, 38 (2014): 161-179. For more information on the concept, see Moscovici, Serge. “Des représentations collectives aux représentations sociales: éléments pour une histoire”, Les représentations sociales, Denise Jodelet, ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989: 62-86; and Jodelet, Denise. “Représentations sociales: un domaine en expansión”, Denise Jodelet, dir. París: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989: 31-61. 3. Aurell, Jaume, ed. Rethinking Historical Genres in the Twenty-First Century, New York: Routledge, 2017. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XII (2018): 57-90 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2018.12.02 HISTORY POPULARISED AND TWEETED: EMOTIONS AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS 59 genres we would highlight the onset of the ‘phantom of simplification’ in social uses of history, with their inevitable acolytes, the stereotypes4 who basically set about disseminating concepts and images.5 In the same direction, César Fornis has even spoken of a complete sendero de tópicos y falacias in his study of social representations of ancient Sparta.6 The idea is not new; Paul Ricoeur himself spoke of the construction of the historical narrative as one of representations that have consequences. They therefore become a subject worthy of study for the historian, who can (and should) be interested in them as well as the effects they create. Roger Chartier converted this question into one of the lines for the future of historical science towards the end of the 1980s.7 Researchers deal with this reality in a variety of ways and denominations. As we have seen, from the sociological perspective reference is made to ‘social’ or ‘collective representations’ that are not only linked to the historical element itself. In the common ground of historians and sociologists the concept of “collective memory” coined by Halbwachs8 (2004) is regularly used. It refers to processes —normally directed by State powers— of the collective construction of a common identity. A concept half-way between the above is that of ‘historical consciousness’,9 recently defended by Jörn Rüsen as a mediation between the past and the present that goes beyond memory because it rationalises it, makes it intelligible and gives it meaning. Historical consciousness, understood in this way, guides decision-making in the present because it makes it comprehensible.10 With regard to memory, we agree with David Lowenthal when he says that it is individual, not collective. For the author of this study, the function of memory is not to conserve the past, rather to adapt it, enrich it and mould it to the present, given that memory’s essential task is to select what should be remembered.11 There is no collective memory, therefore, only individual memory that can be shared, and even then not completely. In the same way as memory can give validity to personal identity, history would allow it to perpetuate collective self-consciousness. As Lowenthal says: 4. Liceras Ruiz, Ángel. “Tópicos, estereotipos y prejuicios, componentes de un aprendizaje informal que deforma”. Iber: Didáctica de las ciencias sociales, Geografía e Historia, 36 (2003): 89-101. 5. Ferrés, Joan. Educar en una cultura del espectáculo. Barcelona: Paidós, 2000. 6. "trail of clichés and fallacies". Fornis, César. “Un sendero de tópicos y falacias: Esparta en la ficción y en la Historia popular”, SPAL, 20 (2011): 43-51. 7. Chartier, Roger. El Mundo como Representación. Historia Cultural: entre práctica y Representación. Barcelona: Gedisa, 1992: 45-62; <http://rodolfogiunta.com.ar/Historia%20urbana/El%20mundo%20como%20 representacion%20(Chartier).pdf>. (Consulted 9th October 2017). The original article was published in Chartier, Roger. “Le monde comme représentation”, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 44/6 (1989): 1505-1520 <https://perso.univ-lyon2.fr/~jkempf/articles_m2/chartier_representation.pdf> (Consulted 9th October 2017). 8. Halbachs, Maurice. La memoria colectiva. Saragossa: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2004. 9. Rüsen, Jörn. Narration, interpretation, orientation. New York-Oxford: Bergham Books, 2005; Cataño Balseiro, Carmen Lucía. “Jörn Rüsen y la conciencia histórica”, Historia y Sociedad, 21 (2011): 221-243. 10. “The simple answer is that historical consciousness functions as a specific orientational mode in actual situations of life in the present: it functions to aid us in comprehending past actualy in order to grasp present acualy”. Rüsen, Jörn. Narration, interpretation…: 24. 11. Lowenthal, David. El pasado es un país extraño. Madrid: Akal, 1998: 306. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XII (2018): 57-90 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2018.12.02 60 ÍÑIGO MUGUETA los grupos se definen a sí mismos a través de la Historia de la misma manera que un individuo lo hace a través de la memoria.12 Therefore, we believe that memory is fallacious in itself, as many authors have suggested.13 Another reference work for us is that of Fentress and Wickham, who use the term ‘social memory’, considering that while memory is individual it is also conditioned by social interaction, on one hand, and by its social exposure in the form of a narrative discourse on the other.14 Although sociology has also used the term ‘social memory’, we can share this when the memory of an event experienced is indeed analysed collectively, but not when it refers to the evocation of something that is impossible to remember due to the distance in time.15 Finally, as Jerome De Groot points out, to a certain extent modern-day